Capitalism is a failure - what the bailout means for working people

Capitalism is a failure - what the bailout means for working people

Public meeting to discuss the collapse of the financial markets and what this means for working people.

Location: 3022 Cherokee St # A (CAMP Building), St. Louis, MO 63118

Sponsored by: Workers International League

Contact: (314) 435-2493
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Capitalism has Failed
The Working Class Should Not Have to Pay for the Capitalist Crisis!

After a week of turmoil on financial markets, on Saturday, September
20th, President Bush said he was proposing to spend $700bn of taxpayers’
money to buy the rotten mortgage assets held by the banks on
Wall Street. He said he was doing this to help the average American
family with their homes and jobs.

At the same time Gordon Brown, at the annual Labour party conference
in Blackpool, England, was telling delegates the same thing to
explain why he intervened personally to ensure the Lloyds Bank
bought the Britain’s biggest mortgage lender HBOS last week.
Both were lying. They were not taking these actions to help working
people. They did it to save finance capital from disaster.

The Bush-Paulson plan to buy to rotten mortgages, along with the
nationalization of the two biggest mortgage lenders only ten days ago,
will mean that the US government will soon own the vast majority of
Americans’ mortgages. It will make the vast majority of American
household debt held by the government. Overall, it is the biggest
nationalization in world history, equivalent to $6trn, or 45% of annual
US output.

But, of course, the devil is in the detail of the terms. This is not expropriating
the banks. On the contrary it is saving them - with nearly full
compensation, so they can resume their operations and restore their
profitability.

In turn, US government debt will rise 40% of GDP to nearly 100%!
And what will the taxpayer get for this huge bailout? Just a load of
defaulted and non-paying mortgages, along with higher taxes, cuts in
public spending on health, education and social security.

And behind those bad debts lie a trail of misery for millions of Americans
who will lose their homes and eventually their jobs. Nothing
much will be done for them. It won’t stop the unfolding slump in
world capitalism that we are entering with rising unemployment,
falling real incomes and declining public services.

Instead most of the money will go to help the fat cats of Wall Street
get out of their mess. You see, when it comes down to the impending
collapse of capitalism, suddenly socialism is a good idea. It’s just this
is socialism for the rich, while the rest of us have to continue to live
under capitalism.

-Money for Jobs, Housing, Health Care and Education!NOT War and Corporate Bailouts!

-A Living Wage For All!

-Universal Healthcare and Education!

-Break with the Democrats!

-For a Mass Party of Labor Based on the Trade Unions!

www.socialistappeal.org www.marxist.com